Why We Should Find Gratitude & Beauty In Everything

Look around. See those little elements all around you for which you can be grateful. Yes, I know. Sometimes the view is crowded. Sometimes you can’t see the beauty due to the crosscurrents of pain. We have so many stories. So many intelligent, complicated, sophisticated stories about why we can’t ... we can’t what? We can’t accomplish our dreams. We can’t take the lid off the box. We can’t rise to the occasion and trump the naysayers.

The internal naysayers are louder than the external ones.

Stay focused on the gratitude. Seek those elements. Seek the things that make your heart smile, your soul sing, your spirit content. When you're looking through that lens, everything else seems simple. You appreciate yourself, your whole self. You turn the eyes and ears and touch of kindness on every facet of yourself — your physical being, your intellectual bones, your emotional pool, and your spirit. You inherently understand that you are a spiritual being having a human experience. And as such, the most skilled, gifted, enlightened thing you can do is accept yourself wholly and completely, with nurturing and kindness, and then extend this same grace to the world.

Yes, the world. In this moment, from this vantage point, if you see or feel someone’s (or your own pain), all you feel in response is compassion. Pure, deep, unending, overwhelming compassion. And you know, this is the most powerful you can be.

Lay down your arms. Step into the zone. Seek the gratitude. See the beauty. Hunt the beauty. Acknowledge it all around you. And know this moment — yes, this one right here — is perfect. It is exactly as it should be. In this moment, you have everything you need. You have air to breathe and feelings to feel and heart to share. And life, with its ups and downs, its joys and pains, its struggles and victories, is phenomenally perfect. Nothing more and nothing less. There is so much to be grateful for. Right at your fingertips.

When you allow yourself to shift to this humble state, you'll be amazed at what opens up for you.